The Massachusetts Clean Energy Center board has tapped Ben Downing, an executive with Cambridge startup incubator The Engine, to be the quasi-public agency’s next chief executive officer.
Downing takes over MassCEC at a challenging time for the clean-tech sector, as it experiences significant losses of financial support from the federal government — and in the case of offshore wind power, outright hostility. Downing, though, said he’s hopeful the sector will continue to flourish.
“I’m clear-eyed about the challenges we face but [also] optimistic,” Downing said. “Massachusetts could be a road map for the rest of the country. ... This is the moment in the movie to say we all came together and found a way to do it.”
Downing said he first became interested in energy and affordability issues as a young state senator in the Berkshires, listening to constituents’ concerns after a few paper mills closed due in large part to high energy costs. He became a leader on Beacon Hill as co-chairman of the Legislature’s energy committee, and helped write a 2016 clean-energy bill that spurred big projects such as the Vineyard Wind offshore wind farm and the New England Clean Energy Connect power line.
From there, he joined Boston-based solar installer Nexamp in late 2016, and worked there for four-plus years. He launched on a brief run for governor, before bowing out in late 2021, less than a month before Governor Maura Healey formally entered the race. In 2022, Downing joined The Engine, where he helped foster a new generation of clean-tech startups including Form Energy, VEIR, Sublime Systems, and Lydian Labs.
“The mission of MassCEC sits at the nexus of where I’ve spent a lot of my career: policy, economic development, climate technologies, all coming together,” Downing said.
Downing said he reached out to Healey’s energy and environmental affairs secretary Rebecca Tepper, who chairs MassCEC’s board, late last year to express his interest in the MassCEC role after Emily Reichert announced in November that she would be stepping down. (Reichert earned around $250,000 in the job, though a spokesman said Downing’s salary has not yet been determined.) Downing will join MassCEC in April; Jennifer Le Blond has been leading the agency on an interim basis since Reichert’s departure, and will return to her role leading MassCEC’s emerging climate-tech team.
MassCEC has more than 130 employees and an operating budget of more than $40 million, as well as an annual budget for grants of around $141 million and $33 million in capital projects. An economic development bill passed in 2024 provides new financial incentives for clean-tech firms that the agency now oversees.
“Certainly we can’t step up and step in everywhere where the federal government has pulled back,” Downing added, “but there’s a lot we can do.”
Jon Chesto can be reached at jon.chesto@globe.com. Follow him @jonchesto.